Lexicon Achieves Research Milestone in Takeda Alliance
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Lexicon Genetics Incorporated has announced that Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited has selected LG474 for therapeutic development. LG474 is a target that was discovered by Lexicon in its Genome5000™ program.
Under the terms of the companies' alliance, the selection by Takeda of a target for therapeutic development entitles Lexicon to a $5 million research milestone payment.
In July 2004, Lexicon and Takeda entered into an alliance to develop new drugs directed against promising hypertension targets discovered in Lexicon's Genome5000 program.
In this program, Lexicon is using its proprietary gene knockout technology to discover the functions of 5,000 of the most pharmaceutically important genes in the human genome.
Takeda is responsible for the screening, medicinal chemistry, preclinical and clinical development and commercialization of drugs directed against Lexicon's targets, and bears all related costs.
The financial consideration to Lexicon under the alliance consisted of a $12 million upfront payment and includes research milestone payments for each target selected for therapeutic development and clinical development and product launch milestone payments related to the development and commercialization of drugs resulting from the alliance.
Lexicon is also entitled to receive royalties on worldwide sales of drugs commercialized by Takeda.
"We are pleased that, after extensive research, Takeda supports our positive assessment of the value of the LG474 target and is committed to advancing this drug discovery program into development," said Arthur T. Sands, M.D., Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Lexicon.
"Takeda's selection of LG474 is an encouraging progression of our alliance toward therapeutic development and further validation of the importance of the targets we are discovering."
"We are pleased to start research study of LG474 as the first target that we have selected under this collaboration with Lexicon Genetics," said Shigenori Ohkawa, Ph.D., general manager of Takeda's Pharmaceutical Research Division.
"We highly expect this research to lead to the discovery of new drugs for cardiovascular diseases."
